


Dragons, Lions and A Truth Half Told

by Sir_Bedevere



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-04
Updated: 2013-01-04
Packaged: 2017-11-23 16:37:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/624286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sir_Bedevere/pseuds/Sir_Bedevere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Papa, what happened to your hand?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dragons, Lions and A Truth Half Told

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't going to upload this today but today is my 21st birthday and I wanna give you all a present. So have some Seaworth family times :)

“Papa, what happened to your hand?”

Ten minutes.

That’s how long Davos was back with his family before one of the boys – in this case, Allard – could no longer contain himself and asked the question that he hadn’t entirely thought of an answer to yet. 

He’d come home to Flea Bottom for the time being, told to pack up his family and his things and be ready to sail to their new home in a week. Lord Stannis was sending one of his own ships to collect them. Davos had sent a letter to Marya, dictated by him to the kind old maester at Storm’s End who was so sick from hunger he could barely hold a pen but who had insisted on doing it anyway. He’d told her everything that had happened, including why he was suddenly short some finger joints, and he looked to her now in silent appeal over the heads of four very inquisitive boys.

She smiled and just turned back to the fire.

“It’s your story to tell, my love.”

They had made a promise to one another many years ago, when Dale was born, that he and any other children they might have would never find out what Davos did for a living. Marya had dreams for them that didn’t involve breaking the law and knowing what their father did would only encourage them. He couldn’t very well tell them the truth.

“Papa?” Matthos pulled on his good hand, “Tell us the story!”

“I will, my boys, I will,” he said, sweeping Matthos on to his lap besides the youngest, Maric, “But first we will have our dinner and then I’ll tell you.”

The boys groaned in unison but seemed to accept the compromise. Marya was bustling around preparing the food and when Davos tried to stand and help her she shook her head.

“I don’t need any help. Play with the boys.”

So Davos got down on his knees and watched his sons playing with the wooden soldiers and ships he had struggled so hard to buy them just the year before. Dale and Allard seemed to be in the middle of a complicated on-going battle that they needed no help with. Matthos co-opted his father into playing ‘Hunt the Targaryan’, a game Davos wasn’t sure he approved of but joined in with for the time being. Little Maric, only two name days old, just clung to him and buried his head in his shoulder, content to just be.  
They were such good boys, good despite the things that they saw every day in Flea Bottom, and Davos was filled with a renewed joy that he would soon take them away from all this and into respectable society. They would be squires and knights someday, maybe sail in the royal fleet, and never have to worry about where the next meal was coming from. Dale and Allard had gone hungry too many times when they were very small for him to ever forget their little cries of self-pity. It was a sound that haunted him at night. He wondered if Lord Stannis had the same problem, watching his little brother starve for a year. It hardly seemed fair that the young were always the ones to suffer the most. It hardly seemed fair at all.

“Papa?” Dale said, shaking his arm and snapping him out of his revelry, “Papa, are you alright?”

“Yes, I am,” he said, “I’m just pleased to be home.”

Dinner was wonderful, a taste of home that he had been missing for far too long. The boys talked animatedly and Davos found himself staring at Marya for almost the entire time. She caught his eye a few times and blushed, shaking her head, and he pulled his gaze away reluctantly. There would be time for her later, she was saying. He needed to focus on his sons.

When it came to bedtime, Davos still wasn’t sure what to tell them about his bandaged hand. The three oldest boys shared a large bed in the second bedroom and Marya cajoled them into it with well-practised ease. She dropped a kiss on the top of her husband’s head as she left him to it, perched on the edge of the bed with Maric cradled in his arms. 

“Come on, Papa!” Allard said, “We’ve been waiting forever! Tell us the story.”

Story.

It could be a story.

“Well, have you ever heard of Storm’s End? It’s a big castle out in the sea.”

“I have,” Dale said, but the others shook their heads.

“Well, it all happened at Storm’s End,” Davos said, swinging his legs up onto the bed and crossing them so Maric could nestle on his lap. The other three moved closer to him, eyes already wide.

“The people of Storm’s End were hungry, starving to death, because an evil dragon was sat outside and he wouldn’t let anyone in or out. He was jealous, you see, because the people in Storm’s End were good and had lots of friends. So he decided that he would starve them to teach them a lesson.”

“What was his name?” Allard said, “The dragon?”

Davos thought for a moment and smirked to himself, “Mace. The dragon’s name was Mace. And he had some friends, evil lions, who helped him keep the people inside the castle. Their names were Randyll and Paxter and for almost a year no one could get in or out and the people in the castle grew hungrier and hungrier. I heard about this when I was out on my ship and I decided that it wasn’t fair the people in the castle would starve, so I decided to take some food and try to sneak in across the water. So I filled my boat with onions and fish and one night I sailed as close as I could to the castle.”

“Weren’t you scared?” Matthos said breathlessly, “Of the dragon seeing you?”

“I was very scared,” Davos said honestly, “Very scared. I went very slowly and every time the moon came out I had to try and sail into a shadow. But I got there in the end, in a secret passageway under the rocks, and I walked right up to the castle and I asked to see the lord.”

“Lord Stannis?” Dale interjected, “Mama said his name was Lord Stannis.”

“That’s right, and he was very pleased to see me,” Davos said, banishing from his thoughts the real reaction of his new liege lord, which was to draw his dagger and hold it to his throat until he was convinced that it wasn’t another Tyrell trick, “And he sent the men he had who could still walk to come down with me and get the food from the boat. We were stacking the crates and then we heard a terrible roar from the mouth of the cave!”

“Was it the dragon?” Allard gasped, bouncing up and down, “Did he find you?”

“The dragon was too big to fit into the cave,” Davos said, channelling the little boy’s enthusiasm, “But he had fetched one of his lion friends to come and stop us!”

“Which one?”

“Randyll,” Davos said without skipping a beat, “It was Randyll, the meaner of the two. Lord Stannis’ men drew their swords but they were weak with hunger and he pushed past them. He could smell that I didn’t belong there and although I had my little knife, you know that I am not a fighter so all I could do was put my hands up to try and protect myself. And can you guess what happened?”

“He bit you!” Matthos shrieked, “He bit your fingers off!”

“He did, with one big bite of his teeth. I screamed and it scared him for a moment, long enough for some of the men to chase him away. The dragon picked him up in his claws and carried him away, and I went to Lord Stannis with the rest of the men. He got his maester to help me, to clean up my hand, and then one of the men came and gave me my joints. Randyll had spit them out all on the cave floor so the maester boiled them down to the bones and I brought them home to show you. Do you want to see?”

They all nodded enthusiastically and Davos reached for the leather pouch around his neck. Carefully he tipped the bones into his hand and let the boys look at them. Dale prodded one in disgusted fascination but the others wouldn’t touch them. Sliding them back into the pouch, he retied the thong around his neck.

“And Lord Stannis was so pleased that his men were no longer starving that he asked me to be a knight, which is why we are moving to a keep of our very own, and one day you might all be knights as well, or sail in the royal fleet. Would you like that?”

“Can I be a captain?” Allard said, “Can I have my very own ship?”

“Maybe one day,” Davos said, “Now get in to bed. I’ll go and put Maric down and come back.”

He put his youngest son to sleep in the little crib in the corner of his and Marya’s room, listening to the giggles from next door as the others settled down. He watched Maric for a few moments and then crept back in. As he suspected, Matthos was already asleep, laid closest to the wall, with Dale on the outside, a protective gesture that his eldest son had implemented himself as soon as his younger brothers were old enough to sleep with him. Davos leaned over to Matthos and kissed his forehead, and then Allard’s, and lastly Dale. Allard was already drifting as well, something Dale checked before he whispered, “There wasn’t really a dragon was there? Or lions? Did a man cut your fingers off?”

“Yes, it was a man,” Davos whispered back, knowing that his oldest was too bright to fall for something as fantastical as his story, “But it is all done now so you don’t need to worry. No one is going to try again.”

“That’s good,” Dale said, “I’m glad you’re home, Papa. I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” Davos said, stroking Dale’s thick brown hair, “Now go to sleep. Tomorrow we will go to buy a map, just you and me, and I can show you where we are going.”

“Yes Papa,” Dale smiled, “Will you show me how to read it? And can we get a compass?”

“Of course we can. Enough talking now. I love you, son.”

“I love you too, Papa.”


End file.
